Posted on 09/05/2015 1:47:06 PM PDT by iowamark
Are you confused about the claim that Ted Cruz is not a natural-born citizen, with all its attendant disinformation? Well, here is your answer.
We have gathered together the top arguments of those who challenge Senator Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president, along with exhaustive research and links to original sources, and condensed it all into one, bite-sized yet authoritative piece. We have done all the work for you, assembling a definitive reference you can use any time you hear someone say that Ted Cruz is ineligible to run for and serve as president.
So without any further ado, here are the Top Ten Birther*Arguments against Ted Cruz’s eligibility, and the reasons they are completely wrong.
Argument 1 – “Natural-born citizen” (NBC) and “Citizen at birth” (CaB) have completely different meanings.
Answer – No, they do not. They are synonymous. If you think the idea they aren’t synonymous is silly, you may not need to go on, because unless it is true, the entire debate is over. You would also be in agreement with the Congressional Research Service, which published a paper in 2011 reaching the same conclusion. Trying to argue that they do not mean the same thing is akin to claiming the terms dog and domestic canine mean completely different things. The burden of proof rests with the Eligibility Challengers. I have never heard or read anyone provide any proof whatsoever for the contention these terms have different meanings. There is no case law, and nothing else in the U.S. code or the Constitution itself, lending support to the idea that the two terms have separate meanings. Claims to the contrary are dealt with serially throughout this primer.
Argument 2 – Cruz isn’t qualified because he’s not a natural-born citizen; let him stay in the Senate where he’s doing some good.
Answer – If Cruz isn’t qualified to serve as president, he isn’t qualified to serve in the Senate either, because he is not a citizen at all. There are only two types of citizenship: natural-born, and naturalized. If Cruz is not a NBC, he is not a citizen at all, because he has never been naturalized. I have heard and read many arguments put forth by Eligibility Challengers to the effect that while Cruz is not natural-born, he is still a citizen. The impossibility of this claim is supported by case law.
Argument 3 – A NBC is someone born on U.S. soil, whose parents are BOTH citizens.
Answer – This is false. The term NBC comes to us from English Common Law. This fact is confirmed and supported by judicial precedent. And at the time of the founders, the legal definition of NBC was more sophisticated and complex. It included children born on English soil, as well as children born on foreign soil, whose fathers were English subjects. This was in fact the standard for establishing citizenship at birth for most of the world at the time. The only distinction between then and now is that women are now considered legally equal to men, so that citizenship status may flow from either parent, not just the father. That is unless you want to try to make the argument citizenship status should ONLY flow from the father to the child, and the mother’s status doesn’t count. Good luck making that argument.
Argument 4 – The Framers used the definition of NBC established by Emer de Vattel in his book The Law of Nations, which requires native birth, and TWO citizen parents.
Answer – First, as noted above, the term NBC comes from English Common Law, not from Vattel, who did not use that term in writing his book. Second, there is no evidence the Framers gave Vattel’s work any special weight or influence when writing the Constitution. Vattel was a committed monarchist, and many of his views were antithetical to the Framers. Finally, Vattel did NOT use the two-parent citizens standard in his recognition of what he called “indigènes.”
Argument 5 – The Supreme Court case “The Venus” establishes a legal precedent defining the meaning of NBC
Answer – No, it does not. There is no such language in the opinion written in this case. Eligibility Challengers point to a quotation of Vattel’s The Law of Nations that is contained in the ruling, and claim it creates legal precedent establishing a definition of NBC. The trouble is the Venus was not a unanimous decision by the court. The passage quoted comes from the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall. Dissenting opinions do not carry any legal authority or precedent. And as has already been established earlier, Vattel is not regarded as either the source of the meaning of NBC, or even particularly influential upon the Framers.
Argument 6 – The Supreme Court case Shanks vs. DuPont establishes a legal precedent defining the meaning of NBC
Answer – No, it does not. There is no such language in the opinion. The case is somewhat complicated, and concerns the question of when a woman by the name of Ann Shanks actually lost her citizenship status in order to determine the disposition of her estate after her death, not whether or not she was a citizen. The particulars took place during a unique time in history, that being the War for Independence with Great Britain, and Shanks’ citizenship status was controlled by a combination of factors, including her father’s choice to support the Colonials as opposed to the British, her age at the time of his death, and the particulars of the Treaty of Paris, which established the terms to end the war. The only precedent concerning citizenship established by this case is that one cannot gain or lose citizenship through marriage, even if that marriage is to an alien of a belligerent nation.
Argument 7 – The Supreme Court case Dred Scott vs. Sanford establishes a legal precedent defining the meaning of NBC
Answer – No, it does not. There is no such language in the opinion. As with The Venus, eligibility challengers are relying again on a quote taken from Vattel incorporated in one of the opinions written in the decision, but once again it is not the majority opinion of the court, but a separate opinion written by Justice Peter Vivian Daniel, and as with The Venus, it carries no legal weight or influence. AND as has been established elsewhere, Vattel was still not the source of authority for the meaning of NBC. (Apparently, however, he was quite influential on Supreme Court Justices writing minority opinions!)
Argument 8 – The Supreme Court decision Minor vs. Happersett establishes a legal precedent defining the meaning of NCB
Answer – No, it does not. There is no such language in the opinion. You can find a detailed analysis of the case here. I find the fact eligibility challengers ever refer to this case to be really ironic. Minor was a suffrage-era case in which a woman, Virginia Minor, argued that being a citizen by birth, she could not be denied the right to vote. The Supreme Court agreed that she was a citizen by birth (obviously), but that did not give her any such right—indeed, that the Constitution did not guarantee anyone such a right. The irony is the precedents this decision does establish actually defeat many of their own arguments. These include the Court’s finding that Congress could define the meaning of NBC, and that there were only two types of citizen, NBC and naturalized.
Argument 9 – The Supreme Court case United States vs. Wong Kim Ark has nothing to do with the question of NBC, because Wong Kim Ark’s citizenship “came from the 14th Amendment.”
Answer – This case is something of an “inconvenient truth” for eligibility challengers—first, because it is one of the most important court cases in U.S. history dealing with citizenship, and second, because rather than supporting their argument, it undermines it. It is truly shocking to see how many eligibility challengers don’t bother to read the cases they cite, as you will sometimes hear them claim that this case somehow proves their contentions about the definition of NBC. Quite the reverse is true. Wong Kim Ark clearly establishes English Common Law as the source of the Framers’ understanding of NBC, and that anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parentage, obtains their citizenship at birth. By the way, this precedent also covers Sen. Marco Rubio, who some eligibility challengers also like to claim is not a NBC because his parents were not citizens at the time of his birth. Rubio was born in the United States, and so is a NBC.
Argument 10 – The Supreme Court case Perkins vs. Elg establishes a legal precedent to the effect that NBC requires TWO citizen parents
Answer – No, it does not. There again is no such language in the opinion. The typical claim is that the opinion says the only reason Perkins was a CaB is that her parents were both naturalized citizens, and this means you must have TWO citizen-parents in order to be a CaB. The opinion says nothing of the sort, and in fact actually makes clear the fact that her status as a citizen is established by her birth on U.S. soil alone.
It actually all boils down to just one argument…
The first thing one must understand is the entire eligibility-challenger argument as it pertains to Ted Cruz is based on two assertions:
Briefly, these two assumptions are vital to ALL arguments made by eligibility challengers, because, as noted earlier, NBC and CaB are synonymous terms, and the definition of CaB is contained in Title 8, Subsection 1401 of the U.S. Code. By claiming the two terms are not synonymous, they believe they can dispense with the definition contained in 1401 altogether. This is vital to their arguments, because under 1401, Cruz is clearly qualified to serve as president. This is not some dodge or loophole as eligibility challengers may imply, this law is many decades old, and predates Cruz’s birth. Subsection 1401 has been the controlling legal authority on the definition of who is a natural-born citizen, a.k.a. citizen at birth, since its codification, and in fact is supported by Supreme Court precedent as well as all our history. Vattel, Wong Kim Ark, Shanks and all the rest is just window dressing.
In conclusion, not a single argument put forth by the eligibility challengers holds up. Each is either a misinterpretation at best or an outright falsehood at worst. Arguing over this issue has become a waste of time much better spent on other things. Unfortunately, there are a few folks who continue to cling to this view, and equally unfortunate is the often venomous attitude they display toward anyone who disagrees with them. Most of the arguments you may encounter will consist of one or more of the claims we have covered above. And most of the time, they will count on you not bothering to actually try to research or verify what they claim a particular court case says. Consider this your “Cliff Notes” on all their arguments—a concise, documented reference to all that is wrong about their claims.
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*Birther – Although this term is proudly worn by some, it is often used as a demeaning pejorative, which is not our intent. Unfortunately, it is also the only widely recognized term for those who argue against the eligibility of Cruz, Obama, Rubio and others, based on their misunderstanding (or to be fair, their misrepresentation in some cases) of U.S. law. To avoid the appearance casual insult, we have substituted the term Eligibility Challengers throughout most of this work.
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Additional research and documentation can be found here:
Primer on the Eligibility of Ted Cruz for President in 2016: Part 1 – Did Vattel’s The Law of Nations provide the Framers’ definition of Natural Born Citizen? by Patrick Colliano
Primer on the Eligibility of Ted Cruz for President in 2016: Part 2 – An Analysis of Minor vs. Happersett, by Patrick Colliano
Primer on the Eligibility of Ted Cruz for President in 2016: Part 3 – Analysis of The Venus, Wong Kim Ark, Shanks vs. DuPont and other SCOTUS precedents dealing with Citizenship, by Patrick Colliano
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About the authors – A very common accusation hurled at anyone skeptical of “Birther” theories is that they are motivated by simple political partisanship, so it is worth noting that Mr. Colliano and Mr. Conterio occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum on most issues.
Mr. Colliano is comfortable being described as generally liberal. No supporter of Ted Cruz, he says ” Even as I was writing my essays, the news was reporting his one-man filibuster of the Affordable Care Act. I had to ask myself again why I was bothering to spend my time and creativity defending this guy. The answer, of course, is that it’s right. If Cruz wins the next Presidential election, especially by a narrow margin, I could end up kicking myself for it. But Ted Cruz, like all candidates for public office, deserves to be judged upon his merits, not rejected on the basis of some ridiculous misconception that he is not eligible.”
Mr. Conterio is unabashedly conservative in his views, as regular readers of WFP will undoubtedly know. He says “I was actually beguiled by the early reports and arguments that Obama may not be a natural-born citizen, but was quickly disabused of the idea after spending an afternoon verifying Obama’s parentage, and going straight to the U.S. Code to see what it says about being a natural-born citizen. I knew at that point it was foolishness. Today, I probably have just as many conservatives who don’t like me as liberals, due to my persistent habit of debunking their claims about Obama, Cruz, or Rubio. It is way past time we move beyond the ‘birther’ phenomenon.”
sorry. re-reading your original, i would say that you are correct. if the law is required to define your citizenship, then you are not a natural born citizen
this is the easiest way to remember the definition:
a natural born citizen is a citizen naturally... as there are no alternatives
Obama was born on US soil (Hawaii) to a US citizen mother. Obama is a Natural Born Citizen, there is no precedent.
Who says?..
The Governor Of Hawaii for one :
“You know, during the campaign of 2008, I was actually in the mainland campaigning for Sen. McCain. This issue kept coming up so much in the campaign, and again I think it’s one of those issues that is simply a distraction from the more critical issues that are facing the country. And so I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact. And yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue. And I think it’s, again, a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. It’s been established. He was born here.” —[former] Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI)
Tell it to the Courts.
There’s been 117 years for a ruling that differentiates a Citizen of the United States At Birth from a natural born citizen and that ruling has not yet been handed down.
In 1898 the federal government’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to rule on: “Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth?”
“To hold that Wong Kim Ark is a natural-born citizen within the ruling now quoted, is to ignore the fact that at his birth he became a subject of China by reason of the allegiance of his parents to the Chinese Emperor. That fact is not open to controversy, for the law of China demonstrates its existence. He was therefore born subject to a foreign power; and although born subject to the laws of the United States, in the sense of being entitled to and receiving protection while within the territorial limits of the nation—a right of all aliens—yet be was not born subject to the ‘political jurisdiction’ thereof, and for that reason is not a citizen. The judgment and order appealed from should be reversed, and the respondent remanded to the custody of the collector.”
Wong Kim Ark won his appeal.
And I think it’s, again, a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. It’s been established.
The real issue is....
Is Obama A Natural born Traitor.... OR
...............A Foreign born Traitor................
I see it as a mute point.. the only answer is WHO CARES.?.
Fry the Son of a Bitch.. as quickly as it can be made legal to fry traitors again..
If he escapes to a foreign country go get his ass..
as for telling it to the courts, i don't have to. i can read the meaning from senate hearings from the one who proposed the amendment back in 1868:
btw, if you actually read the highlighted text, you'll understand how anchor babies are not citizens either... since their parents do not reside within a state and aren't under the jurisdiction of the US, as they're here illegally.
“i am in the same situation as your son. my allegiances were split at birth between the love of my birth country and that of my mother’s.”
You must have been super smart at birth to have allegiance (love) for two countries at that moment. Your mental state of love does not affect US citizenship law. You can keep both citizenships or you can relinguish one to have allegiance to only one country.
Cruz was brought here as a baby, grew up here and had no allegiance at all to Canada but he did give up that citizenship to Canada to remove all doubt as to his allegiance.
Cruz
When a baby is born it has no legal citizenship until the birth is legally recorded. Cruz's father did not contact Cuba to record his birth so he was never a legal citizen there. Every birth must be recorded to be legal. A hospital in the US will bring papers to the parents to fill out so the birth can be recorded.
My grandson's birth papers were filled out at the hospital in London that day AND at the American Embassy that day.
I had two birth certificates in Texas. My parents filled out a birth form for me on the day I was born in Texas. Those papers were sent to the Texas Records division and it was wrong as the Texas recorder misspelled my first name given to me. When my parents got the birth certificate, they had to contact the records dept. to get a new form and refile it with the correct spelling.
I may be the only person on FR who had two birth certificates from the same state.
as smart as the Founders expected... as anyone that grew up in a family would have some allegiances to the ancestral home country, especially for first generations.
but you knew that and were just being snarky. thanks for adding such valued input to FR.
I may be the only person on FR who had two birth certificates from the same state.
you have one birth certificate with a correction.
“you have one birth certificate with a correction.”
Cetainly I know that. Howeer, it was interesting it had to be done over.
The Supreme Court has ruled that every word in the Constitution has meaning.
Natural born citizen is three words. Adding ‘natural’ requires one must be something more than a born citizen.
Of course you can change the meaning just by putting a hyphen between natural and born. Then “natural-born” can be interpreted as nothing more than born a citizen.
Unfortunately for those making that argument, there’s no hyphen between those two words in the Constitution.
But I am watching with interest how many are sticking that hyphen in there to justify their position.
To me and the framers it is all about loyalty to a country other than the U.S. Cruz has a fixable problem. His situation was not explicitly contemplated at the time. His father was given political asylum in the U.S. when his student visa ran out, he then got a green card. I believe that after Ted was born, the father became a citizen of Canada. And later (2005) became a citizen of the U.S. Though it was a torchered path for his father. I believe Ted Cruz’s loyalty to the U.S. is rock solid and that he has no loyalty to Cuba or Canada that would be placed above the U.S. Ted’s father was a legal resident of the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction. His mother was a full citizen and the location of birth is irrelevant.
You can reason and debate all you want, but there are some people who simply do not like Ted Cruz, for whatever facts you present they will have an answer. They are entitled.
Personally, I respect him and love his integrity, his tireless efforts (filibuster),his view for our country, his truthfulness (McConnell never said “I didn’t do that),his personal character, the whole package.
But those others are entitled to their opinions.
Ted Cruz was definitely a U.S. citizen at birth.
It is possible for U.S. citizen parents to transmit citizenship to their children depending on when the child was born and when the parents lived in the United States.
If the applicant was born to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent:
The child was born between Dec 24, 1952 and Nov 14, 1986, then the U.S. citizen parent must have resided in the U.S. ten years prior to the applicant’s birth, with five of those years occurring after the parent turned 14.
There were “birther” voices who were making all kinds of wild claims and used embarassing language to do it.
If Cruz or any candidate but Trump associates with those embarassing voices, that candidate will lose votes.
It’s like associating with some of the embarassing voices on illegal immigration. Guilt by association loses a lot more votes than it gains in most cases.
“Redefining” is your term, not mine. As the Supreme Court said in Minor v Happersett (1874): “The Constitution does not say, in words, who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to determine that. “
I am talking about subsequent RULINGS on the meaning of the term “natural born citizen” following the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
You can’t “redefine” what was never “defined.” If you can find a Supreme Court ruling, a lower court ruling or an action of Congress that differentiates between an Article II, Section 1 “Natural Born Citizen” and a 14th Amendment “Citizen of the United States at Birth,” please post those references and/or citations.
Six Justices of the Supreme Court disagreed with your point of view in 1898 and for the last 117 years, their opinion has held sway:
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
[An alien parent’s] allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’.
“Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ’subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’
“…every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.”
It sounds to me like there was disagreement back then too. They start by stating the most stringent view. Everybody agrees that those people are natural born citizens, but then what about other categories (one citizen parent, born outside the USA, born here with no citizen parent)? But as they said, they didn’t have to answer that because the plaintiff belonged to the former group, so they didn’t.
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